America jg-9

by Stephen Coonts

  "They'll never convict us of anything," she said flatly. "We'll know if they get a sniff. And if they surprise us, we've got the money to hire an army of smart lawyers."

  "It had better never come to that."

  "It won't. I know what I'm doing. You know what you're doing. These others" — she waved a hand dismissively—"what are they going to say? Zelda did this? Zip did that? Naw. They don't now anything. They think we're doing just what we always did, hack into other people's networks, see what the vulnerabilities are, then get a contract to plug the holes."

  Irritated, he brushed her argument away with a flick of his fingers. "They may not know about this operation, but when the heat arrives, they'll turn state's evidence to save themselves from jail. Half of them have already been there, and they don't want to go back."

  "A few hacking charges! We'll pay a fine and get probation, and business will boom. The publicity will be wonderful. Pfffft!"

  "What they'll say will make the FBI dig deeper. I'm not talking about hacking, Zelda, and you damn well know it."

  "We'll be long gone by then, Zipper. Absolutely gorgeously, filthy rich, rich beyond your wildest dreams. Maybe not as rich as Warren Buffett, but we'll be younger and will have had a lot more fun, and we won't be stuck in Omaha."

  "Actually, I think you're doing this for fun, for the challenge of it."

  She eyed him carefully. "You know me pretty well," she conceded.

  Zip Vance stood. "I want to leave you with one thought. The United States government may never get enough evidence to prosecute, and granted, they may even offer immunity if we'll cooperate and tell them what we know." He shrugged eloquently. "But remember this — Antoine Jouany and Willi Schlegel don't play by civilized rules. They've paid us huge heaping piles of money and are going to pay mountains more. And you aren't playing straight with them. They aren't the type to call their lawyers."

  "We've been all through this, Zip," she said, her voice rising, "time and time again. I know what I'm doing. If you don't want to play the game, maybe you'd better go now."

  Their serious conversations on this subject always ended like this. Zelda was… well, shit, she was Zelda.

  "Maybe the game is worth the risks," he said lightly and headed for the elevator. "I just don't want you to forget what the risks are."

  Vladimir Kolnikov stretched out in the captain's bunk aboard America. He glanced at his watch, made sure the cabin door was locked, then turned out the light. Lying in the darkness, he closed his eyes, tried to force his body to relax.

  He had a hell of a headache, so he snapped the light back on, wet a washrag at the sink tap, and lay down again. After turning off the light a second time, he arranged the cool, wet cloth over his forehead and eyes.

  He had first gone to sea thirty-five years ago, a diesel-electric sub that rattled underwater. The Soviets had not known then how good American sonar was. Or would become. If there had been a war with the United States, that old boat would have been quickly sunk.

  Didn't happen, of course. After all the propaganda, all those lies about the superiority of the Soviet system and the moral and financial bankruptcy of the free nations of the West, the whole Soviet edifice shattered and collapsed. All the lies the Communists had told, the crimes they committed, the lives they shattered, the people they murdered — that was the foundation of the Soviet state, and the whole colossal sand castle fell of its own weight.

  If that wasn't bad enough, then came the aftermath! The now anti-Communist nomenklatura soldiered on as before, spouting propaganda about freedom and democracy. Same people, different song. They stole the foreign aid donated by the West, looted the national treasury, sold military equipment, literally robbed their fellow citizens of everything they owned to line their own pockets. They wanted to continue to live the privileged life they had enjoyed in the workers' paradise of Stalin, Khrushchev, Andropov, Kosygin, Brezhnev, and all the others.

  Civilization collapsed in Russia. That was the optimist's take on it. Cynics said it never existed there. Certainly the liberal civilization of the West never existed in Soviet Russia, which had gone directly from a totalitarian society ruled by czars to one ruled by absolute dictators. Now, with the dictators gone, no one ruled. That would change of course, Kolnikov knew. Another dictatorship would inevitably follow, he thought. The Russians liked dictatorship, were comfortable only in an authoritarian, autocratic society where everyone behaved and did as he was supposed to do. And the people at the top set the standard. The Russians did not know how to live any other way.

  Except Kolnikov. He had refused to wait for the inevitable. So had Turchak. The two of them gave up on Mother Russia and sneaked out of the country. Now they were criminals. Traitors.

  Captain First Rank Vladimir Kolnikov, criminal. Thief. Terrorist. Pirate!

  He lay now in the silent darkness listening in vain for sounds of the ship.

  God, she was quiet!

  He turned to the computer screen mounted beside his pillow and touched it with a finger. A menu appeared. He studied the options, then selected one. The boat's depth, course, and speed appeared instantly. Another touch showed him a variety of reactor temperatures and pressures. All normal. He turned his head, closed his eyes, tried to relax.

  Before this adventure was over he was probably going to wish he had stayed in that Paris hire car. It was a living. An honest one, even.

  The hell with it. He had made his choice, cast the dice. However it came out… well, it didn't really matter how it all came out. He knew that. And in truth, didn't really care.

  The National Security Agency is a collection of buildings behind a chain-link fence on the edge of the army's Fort Meade complex between Baltimore and Washington. It is bordered on two sides by major arterial highways. South of the complex across one of the highways sits a regional military jail surrounded by concertina wire. The ugly, gray NSA buildings are festooned with an odd assortment of antennas, although no more so than many other high-tech headquarters in the Washington area. What is not readily apparent from the highway, however, is the size of the complex, which employs sixteen thousand people and houses the largest collection of computers in the world. Most of the complex is underground.

  It was three in the morning when Jake Grafton arrived by helicopter at the National Security Agency. A gentle rain was falling as he walked across the helo pad.

  The woman who met him shook hands, led him through a security checkpoint, and took him into a nondescript government office where three other people waited, two men and another woman.

  "As you know, we've lost a submarine," Jake said to get them started. "We need all the help we can get to find it. I was hoping you folks could do a study of telephone traffic for the last two or three weeks around Providence and New London."

  "It doesn't work quite that way, Admiral," the senior NSA briefer said. She was in her fifties, looked like she had just gotten out of bed an hour ago, which she probably had. "As you are probably aware, we use the Echelon system to monitor foreign telecommunications traffic — hardwired, wireless, satellite, all of it — but legally we can't monitor U.S. domestic communications: That is the FBI's job. And we don't have the storage capacity to record even a statistically significant part of the traffic we do study. We sample conversations and automatically record those that use certain keywords; for example, terrorists, bomb, assignation, etc. But we have to choose our keywords in advance." She explained how they did it, discussed interception techniques, hardware and software.

  "I guess the horse is gone," Jake said finally, when she appeared to be through.

  "Apparently."

  Jake Grafton slapped his knees. He too was running on empty. "Let's do this: Can you monitor all the traffic in the New England area and the Washington area, and do a study on all conversations that talk about the stolen submarine? America."

  "Not legally. But we can ask the British to do it and give us their results."

  "That is legal?"

 
"Oh, yes. We do the British, they do us. Keeps the politicians happy."

  "When you get the study, what will you be able to tell us about those conversations?"

  "Everything. We'll have the conversation, where it originated, where it went, voices that can be identified…."

  "What if they use some sort of code?"

  "Breaking codes is what we do. We examine all suspect conversations to see if they contain a code. It's almost impossible to talk in code without revealing the fact that a code is involved. If it's there, we'll find it. Given enough time and some idea what the coded conversation might be about, we can break it."

  On that note, Jake rose to go. He took a step, then turned and returned to his seat.

  "You got my security clearance?" he said questioningly, looking at the senior woman, who nodded. "Let's do this. Give me a summary of what's going on in the world that isn't in the newspapers. What are you people working on here?"

  They looked at each other. Intelligence projects were discussed on a need-to-know basis, not in wholesale form.

  "Pretend that you are writing a morning briefing for the president, who has been on vacation for a week. What would you tell him?"

  They began. SuperAegis headed the list. Korea, Middle Eastern terrorists, Iraq, oil, an assassination attempt in Ireland… the list was extensive. Almost by the way, one of the men mentioned Antoine Jouany, the financier. "He's making huge bets on the euro, shorting the dollar. We also think he's betting billions on the index futures market. How much, we don't know."

  "What does that mean?" Jake asked.

  "He thinks the American stock market and the dollar are going to get hammered in the near future."

  "Don't people buy and sell futures every day?"

  "Of course. But Jouany has a massive position, we believe. Just how big we don't know."

  "How big is massive?"

  "Ten billion dollars. Maybe twice that. We hope to know more next week. We're working with the CIA, trying to discover just how big the position is, what Jouany thinks is going to happen. His main office is in London, but he operates worldwide."

  "I know he's one of the world's richest men," Jake said slowly. "Is this unusual behavior for him?"

  "He's never bet more than two billion on a market move before, and even then, he hedged in the derivative markets. We think this is a ten-billion-dollar position, but we don't know. It could be smaller."

  "Or a lot more," one of the men said. "Maybe he's been reading tea leaves or studying technical charts. Maybe he knows something we don't. Whatever, we hope to find out what induced him to make such a massive commitment."

  "Have you asked him?"

  "The Brits did. He told them American interest rates were going to move."

  "Are you monitoring the calls to and from his company?"

  "Oh, yes."

  On that note Jake thanked them and headed back toward the helicopter. He wanted desperately to go home to snatch a few hours' sleep. General Le Beau would want a briefing first thing in the morning.

  "These are the targets," Vladimir Kolnikov said to Leon Rothberg and handed him a slip of paper containing three sets of coordinates.

  Rothberg looked at the paper in amazement. "What are they?"

  "Targets."

  "You want to shoot a Tomahawk?"

  "Three of them."

  Rothberg studied the paper. He was sitting on one of the two chairs in the captain's cabin, Kolnikov was sitting on the bunk. "We're almost five hundred miles off the coast."

  "We'll close to about four hundred by dark," Kolnikov said. "I want you to rise to periscope depth—"

  "We don't have a periscope."

  "Whatever. Stick the damn communications mast out of the water, update the inertial with the GPS. Then shoot. I want the missiles to hit their targets before midnight."

  "You know that the missiles must be programmed. I doubt that the United States database is in the mission-planning computer."

  "Of course it's there."

  "Don't tell me my business, Ivan. You are wasting air. Even if the U.S. is in the database, it will take hours to set up each missile." He glanced at his watch. "We don't have anywhere near enough time."

  "We have enough. I know what is involved. Let's go to the control room and do it, shall we?"

  "Shooting missiles wasn't in the plan. Heydrich won't like this. The plan was approved—"

  "I don't care what Heydrich likes or doesn't like. He has no choice. The plan has changed. And you will do it right, won't you? The missiles will hit these targets."

  Leon Rothberg wanted to argue. He was a small man, thirty pounds overweight, a twisted genius who owed money to half the bookies in Boston. "Heydrich paid me. And he still owes me a ton of money, a shit-pot full."

  "Heydrich keeps his promises. He can be relied on to pay his debts. I assure you of that."

  "But he won't like this. This wasn't in the plan! We weren't going to shoot weapons, except as absolutely necessary in self-defense. If we shoot Tomahawks at anybody, every navy in the world will hunt us like we're rabid dogs."

  "It seems I must repeat myself. The plan has changed." Kolnikov reached for Rothberg's face, latched onto his chin, held it as he looked into his eyes. "I want to be sure that you understand the situation. You will program the Tomahawks to fly the routes and profiles I chose and hit the targets I have designated. We will launch the missiles, they will strike their programmed targets, and we will hear that fact verified by news broadcasts on commercial radio. If the missiles don't hit their targets, I will kill you, Rothberg. No excuses, no reprieve, no second chance. Have I made myself clear?"

  "I hear you," Leon Rothberg said contemptuously. He brushed away Kolnikov's hand. "Now you listen to me! If anything happens to me you won't have anyone who knows how to operate the boat's systems. You think this boat is something you order from Dell and figure out by reading the fucking manual? There isn't another submarine in the world with a system like this. Without me you people will die in this steel coffin. I'm the man! You clear on that?"

  Kolnikov slapped him. Just a quick open-handed slap as hard as he could swing his hand. Rothberg went off the chair onto the tiled deck. Quick as a cat Kolnikov reached for Rothberg with both hands, pulled him half erect, put his face within inches of the American's.

  "The only way you can stay alive is to obey my orders. Disobey me just once and I'll put your silly ass in a torpedo tube and you can make like a fish. Maybe you can swim back to Boston."

  He opened the door to the passageway and threw Rothberg through it. The man bounced off the passageway bulkhead and fell heavily to the deck.

  Kolnikov was all over him. "Do you tolerate pain well, Rothberg? Should I break an arm, smash some fingers? You are here for the money. Now you will earn it. Maybe you'll think better with only one hand."

  Kolnikov smelled feces. The American had shit his pants.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The director of the CIA was a tall, balding, sixtyish man with a portly frame. His smooth, round face wore a perpetual frown; he looked as if he hadn't smiled since he got out of diapers. He scowled now at the copy of the letter Jake Grafton handed him, inspected the letterhead, read every word, grimaced at the signature — which was that of the president of the United States — and reluctantly laid it on the desk. Then he read the second sheet of paper Jake had handed him, another letter, this one an original. He laid it on the desk next to the first, arranged the edges so that they touched each other.

  This morning Jake was decked out in his blue uniform. He got a look at himself in the mirror in the foyer as he was shown into the director's office. The thought occurred to him that the uniform with its gold rings on the sleeves and splotches of color on the left breast looked incongruous, out of place among the gray men in this gray building. He had shaken off that thought and looked the director straight in the eye as he said hello and passed him the letters.

  When the director had read both documents twice, he looked agai
n at Jake.

  Okay, said the director, whose name was Avery Edmond DeGarmo. He was one of those men who routinely used all three names. No doubt even his pajamas were embroidered with all three initials. "The president appointed General Le Beau to investigate this submarine mess and he sent you over here with full authority to ask questions in his place. So ask."

  Jake Grafton took his time responding. He crossed his legs, flicked an invisible mote of dust off his trousers. "I have been told that the CIA was training a team of Russian and German expatriates to operate a submarine with minimum manning."

  "That is correct."

  Jake waited. When nothing else was forthcoming, he asked, "Why?"

  The CIA director picked up the letters, studied them again. "The answer to that question is classified above your security clearance."

  "Oh?"

  "You have only a top-secret clearance, according to my staff."

  "Mr. DeGarmo," Jake shot back, "those letters are all the clearance I need to ask any question I choose."

  "These letters are not clearance to violate the security laws. If you think this" — he fluttered one of the sheets—"grants you carte blanche to stroll willy-nilly through that building asking any question that pops into your head, regardless of its bearing on the matter you are investigating, you are sadly mistaken."

  Jake Grafton had been in Washington long enough to know that you got only as much respect as you demanded. "General Le Beau and I will decide the relevance of the information I receive," he replied smoothly. "If you're in the mood for a pissing contest this morning, sir, I'll be delighted to get the commandant on the telephone and you can take it up with him. If you wish, he will call the White House and get someone over there to discuss the fine points with you."

  "The responsibility for security breaches will be on your head, not mine." First and foremost, Avery Edmond DeGarmo was a bureaucrat. "I want that clearly understood."

  Jake gave a curt nod.

  "What was the question?" said DeGarmo.